They are identical units running the same firmware versions. The TM 1000A 
doesn’t give you an option for any kind of backup syncing to NTP on the 
network. They are pure GPS servers; theoretically they either serve the correct 
time or no time at all. So technically to give such as our time deviation would 
be a bug of some kind.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the actual packets received, so I can’t decode them 
to see if this was just bad interpretation on the part of PRTG. Needless to say 
we’re watching these closely, plus all of our other GPS NTP servers. I am 
dumping PCAP from the corresponding firewalls to a database, since the volume 
of NTP traffic is low.

 -mel

On May 10, 2024, at 3:09 PM, Raymond Burkholder <r...@oneunified.net> wrote:

 We had some Meinberg's which did something similar but different some time 
ago.  NTP was out of sync with GPS.  We had a CheckMk instance which detected 
drift between sources in our network.  Turns out there was one or more configs 
in the Meinberg that enable failover from one source to another, and to ensure 
GPS and NTP are working together rather than independently.

Maybe your TimeMachines have similar config variabilities.

On 2024-05-10 14:29, Mel Beckman wrote:


We just had two TM1000 TimeMachine brand GPS NTP servers lose clock sync at the 
same time, in two different cities (LA and Santa Barbara). The  outage lasted 
about five minutes, during which the NTP servers were responding, but with time 
that was 1900 seconds out of sync. The devices showed satellite lock on 8 birds 
(not all the same ones). I've never seen this behavior before with years of NTP 
clock experience.

It could be that these inexpensive NTP servers aren't very selective about 
bogus inputs, as I would have expected them to lose synch in the event of a GPS 
signal failure. Instead they produced garbage. Our PRTG NTP monitor logged the 
problem this way:

      
Sensor SNTP (SNTP) ***
Device      10.2.10.90-TimeMachine NTP server (10.2.10.90)  
New Status at 5/10/2024 12:49:52 PM (Pacific Standard Time):
Down
Last Message:
The target server did not return a valid time. To resolve this issue, use a 
packet analyzing tool and do a trace of the NTP packets to check if all fields 
are correctly populated. (code: PE085)

________________________________
From: NANOG 
<nanog-bounces+mel=beckman....@nanog.org><mailto:nanog-bounces+mel=beckman....@nanog.org>
 on behalf of John Curran <jcur...@arin.net><mailto:jcur...@arin.net>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2024 10:54 AM
To: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org><mailto:nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic 
Storm Watch


SWPC Issues Its First G4 Watch Since 2005 | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction 
Center<https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/swpc-issues-its-first-g4-watch-2005>
swpc.noaa.gov<https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/swpc-issues-its-first-g4-watch-2005>
[favicon.ico]<https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/swpc-issues-its-first-g4-watch-2005>

"Multiple CMEs erupted associated with flare activity from Region 3664 on 07-09 
May. These CMEs are expected to merge with potential arrival expected by early 
May 11 on the UTC day.”

(Low but distinct possibility of effects to radio and transmission systems)

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers


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